Many learners of a keyboard instrument, which is represented by the piano, try to memorize a piece of music and repeat practice, so that the piece of music will be in their repertoire.
Memorizing sheet music means that information on how to play a piece of music is input into the brain of a player. Usually, the player reads sheet music and converts it to information about the positions of pressed keys on a keyboard. Then, the player repeats the practice. In this process, the player's memory is fixed as fingering patterns. That is, it is regarded that memorizing sheet music equals the memory of the fingering patterns. Of course, this process entails the memory of sound. However, most of the learners are striving to practice specializing in the memory of finger movement such as “aim the state where the finger arbitrarily plays the tune without consciousness.
Here, memorizing sheet music can be achieved through various types of memory other than memorizing the fingering patterns. Among them, ear memory and eye memory play a big role. The ear memory refers to memorizing tones of a piece of music. For example, this memory is characterized in that “the music can be replayed from the beginning to the end in the player's brain”. Meanwhile, the eye memory involves “how to move the fingers”. In addition, the eye memory also involves “which keys on a keyboard are pressed?”, “how do notes progress in sheet music?”, and so on. Of course, examples of the other memories also include various body (e.g., posture, touch) memories and memory regarding the player's emotions expressed as music progresses.
Unfortunately, in current piano education, a difference in quality of information about these memories is not taken into account. The information input used to memorize sheet music relies on simply repeating the practice of fixing fingering patterns in the player's brain. Thus, a way in which to memorize music efficiently tends to depend on a way of the burden to translate an easy music score for beginners into positions of keys to press. The main purpose of most of the existing inventions with respect to the learning of piano is to “help beginners, who cannot read sheet music, memorize fingering patterns and then sheet music”, which is about the origin of the above idea and is reflected in the above strategy.
For example, in Patent Literature 1, there is provided a display device for displaying a performance guide for indicating the positions of pressed keys directly on a keyboard instrument and for indicating which fingers should be used. This display device allows a player to avoid a process for reading sheet music in order to memorize it. Accordingly, the player can only make the practice of fixing fingering patterns in the brain so as to memorize the sheet music. This procedure requires a specialized keyboard instrument and ready-to-use music data, and is thus not in universal use. According to Patent Literature 2, a keyboard diagram is presented and can then be used to instruct which fingers of a player should be moved while the player does not have to image sheet music. Except for less difficult introductory music in which there are a smaller number of notes, the diagram expression is difficult, so that a heavy burden of reading it is imposed on learners.
Meanwhile, a device of sheet music is provided in which a keyboard is displayed as a pitch diagram, and plotted, pressed-key instructions, as they are, can be visually projected on the keyboard. This device originates from a play information-recording system called a piano roll for automatic playing pianos and organs that were devised at the end of the 19th century.
The keyboard of a keyboard instrument, in general, consists of black keys and white keys. The arrangements of the keys are different between the anterior surface and the posterior surfaces of the keyboard. Only the white keys are arranged on the anterior surface of the keyboard, and this arrangement involves the diatonic scale of C major. This corresponds to conventional staff notation, which is a pitch diagram of the diatonic scale.
By contrast, the white and black keys are arranged on the posterior surfaces of the keyboard with half-tone intervals, and the structure was arranged in a linear and balanced manner. This arrangement represents a chromatic scale from the viewpoint of music. Here, piano roll sheet music, in which a piano roll is simulated, is a pitch diagram of the chromatic scale corresponding to that on the posterior surfaces of the keyboard.
The inventions disclosed in, for example, Patent Literatures 3, 4, and 5 are configured just as pitch diagrams of the chromatic scale. Learners can look at sheet music based on the above piano roll and can just identify the diagrammed positions of pressed keys. Many pieces of music, however, consist essentially of notes of the diatonic scale. In the piano roll sheet music, for example, in a piece of music in C major, the displayed area of a black key, which represents a non-diatonic note, can be spared. In addition, because the black keys and the white keys deployed as bands or grids of individual keys (pitches) in the piano roll sheet music are visually distinct, the positions of pressed keys can be identified mechanically (instinctively). The chromatic sheet music includes many figurative elements such as background lines. Consequently, there is a disadvantage in which visual complexities occurring when a player reads the sheet music while comparing with the actual keyboard become a burden. Further, note values (i.e., the length of a note) may each be expressed as the length of a symbol indicating the position of a pressed key. In this case, this expression is more complicated along the time axis than that of conventional staff notation. Nowadays, the piano roll sheet music is often employed for a screen for inputting, into a machine (e.g., information devices such as a personal computer), and checking play information as computer music. This is because an overlooked view of the status of tone is better than that of the staff notation. Hence, the piano roll sheet music is suited for checking the mechanical replay of the music. That is, the piano roll sheet music is basically suited for machines (automatic playing pianos) because of its origin. For humans, that is too much burden.
Patent Literatures 6 and 7 provide chromatic sheet music. A method for indicating a pitch position includes using only lines indicating the positions of black keys. The visual complexities of the piano roll sheet music are considerably resolved. However, because the black keys are depicted as abstract images, namely, lines, it is emphasized that pitch is arranged on a linear diagram. Accordingly, when the diagram is read as an image of an actual keyboard, a player cannot instinctively transform the diagram into the visual image of the keyboard. Further, when there are many notes played, it is difficult to visually memorize sheet music. Consequently, the player has to repeatedly look at the sheet music and the keyboard. That is, except for music for beginners, the visual reading has a little use.
In this way, as a means for inputting sheet music information into the player's brain, it cannot be said that the chromatic sheet music (e.g., current piano roll sheet music) is significantly better than the conventional staff notation used during practice. Besides, the players cannot do without the practice of fixing fingering patterns in their brain
The practice of fixing fingering patterns in the player's brain has an intrinsic problem. The player is likely to fall into the situation in which “when the player is confused while playing memorized music, the player cannot remember the next note unless the music is replayed from the beginning”. The practice should also be supported by tone memory. The tone memory is actually a secondary one accompanied by the fingering memory. Thus, the player readily falls into a situation in which every time the player is stuck during performance, the player has no other option than to repeat the fixed fingering patterns from the beginning. Of course, in the case of the learners who have acquired the superior ability to read sheet music, the practice is also supported by the visual memory of the sheet music and the tone memory conceived therefrom. Hence, the above situation hardly occurs. However, most of the learners tend to concentrate on the practice of memorizing sheet music primarily through the training of fingering after memorizing the sheet music rather than educate their ability to read sheet music. Thus, the practice does not result in a sufficient ability to read sheet music.
The quality of the memory, by itself, often involves the case where when memorizing sheet music relies on the fingering memory, “the player cannot reproduce the fingering patterns just in the brain”. That is, the fingering memory is nothing but the memory that cannot be remembered unless the player actually sits in front of a musical instrument. The main cause of this phenomenon is explained such that images of a keyboard are not grasped by “the mind's eye”, a term defined in cognitive psychology. The keyboard is recognized only as the background of the player's fingers. Accordingly, unless there is a situation in which the player faces the piano and sees the keyboard as the actual background, the player cannot replay the fingering patterns.
Here, the images of a keyboard may be retained in the player's brain. In this case, the player can have a strong visual memory configured such that “the player can beforehand and consciously grasp the sequence of the positions of pressed keys that should be touched”, but not the simple fingering memory that is sequentially retrieved such that “one movement is followed by another movement”. In addition, the player can easily learn the visual relationship between the conventional sheet music and the keyboard. This helps the player improve the ability to read sheet music. Further, the tone memory may be connected to the images of a keyboard, so that the player can retain the tone memory as a stronger retrievable memory. The closer various types of information are connected to one another, the stronger memory information the player can retain and retrieve (reproduce). The images of a keyboard become a core element.
Specifically, in piano education, there is a need for a means for enabling a learner to efficiently acquire “keyboard images that can be actively retrieved by the learner”.